If you have a kindle, or a kindle app, I really can’t recommend “The Gated City,” by Ryan Avent, highly enough. (It’s a “kindle single,” longer than an article but shorter than a book. English professors out there, what’s the nonfiction equivalent of a novella? I wouldn’t call it an “essay,” exactly. “Booklet” isn’t quite right. “Chapter” implies a larger whole, and “article” implies a larger volume. I’m stumped.)Although it wasn’t written with community colleges in mind, it explains a lot about the community college world.

A new correspondent writesI work in the English department at a medium-sized but rapidly expanding community college in the Northeast. We are near a large-ish city, but we by no means have the draw of a New York, Boston, or Philadelphia.

An occasional correspondent writes:Our college has made some important strides in aligning long-term planning goals with our budgeting processes. The two issues, however, which seem to cause the most debate and discussion involve emergencies and opportunities.

I’ve been following with interest the stories about the Federal government trying to decide which measures to use to judge the performance of various community colleges against each other.Unfortunately, it appears that some of the measures chosen are far too simplified to give good information.

I’ve been following with interest the stories about the Federal government trying to decide which measures to use to judge the performance of various community colleges against each other.
Unfortunately, it appears that some of the measures chosen are far too simplified to give good information.

The AACC and League for Innovation conferences have both issued their calls for proposals for their Spring conferences. The conferences feature people from community colleges across the country, and at their best, they highlight useful discoveries and/or experiments.

The Boy is starting fifth grade, as hard as it is for me to process that. In our district, fifth grade means moving to a new school building, far from the cozy confines of the much smaller elementary school. He’s ridiculously smart, but still sweetly sensitive, which means that he could be easy prey for the Lord of the Flies types he’ll run across over the next few years. On Saturday he lost a tooth, and the tooth fairy forgot to come. She forgot again on Sunday.TW and I discussed it. It was time.